Overview

We believe every New Zealander has the right to a warm, dry, healthy, and affordable place to live and yet, in Aotearoa New Zealand, 102,123 people – 2.2% of the population – are severely housing deprived, almost half of them under the age of 25. ¹

• As part of the Auckland Housing First Collective, Visionwest Community Housing Tenancy Services provide transitional and permanent housing solutions for those experiencing homelessness.

• In Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Waitaha Canterbury, our Community Housing Support Services provide wraparound support for client whānau to enable them to escape poverty, sustain their tenancies, and work towards achieving their future goals.

Around 20% of children in Aotearoa New Zealand live in a household with lower than 50% of the national median income after deducting housing costs. ²

• Money Mentors is Visionwest’s personalised financial mentoring hub for those who want support with their financial challenges.

Almost 40% of New Zealand households experience food insecurity, while 19% of children live in households that experience food insecurity. ³

• Whai Manaaki Kai, our food supply service, provides multiple avenues for whānau to access food support including Manaaki Kai, our newly established social supermarket and Te Kapu a free weekly lunch run in partnership with Glen Eden Baptist Church for Visionwest client whānau and the local community.

Nearly 1 in 4 New Zealand adults (aged 18 and over) experience ‘poor’ mental wellbeing on the World Health Organisation’s WHO-5 scale.⁴  We believe that, with the right support, people can overcome many of the challenging situations they face and move forward in their lives.

• Visionwest Wellbeing Centre offers a range of confidential counselling and wellbeing services to whānau of all ages including counselling support for children, families, and couples.

• Specialist culturally appropriate trauma counselling is available through Mātanga Oranga, the counselling service within Huia Mai.

• Counselling for children is provided through our counselling in schools programme currently working in six local primary and intermediate schools.

Many older people and those who are living with a disability could not experience the comfort and independence of living in their own home without personalised care and support.

• Visionwest Home Healthcare’s trained Support Workers provide over a million hours of personalised in-home care to over 7,000 client whānau every year.

The unemployment rate of young New Zealanders in Aotearoa New Zealand is three times the national average. ⁵

• Ōhinga Tū, Visionwest’s youth development service, ensures rangatahi who need support in self-development receive the encouragement, wisdom, and advice that will provide inspiration and hope for tomorrow and will enable them to confidently walk the pathway to a flourishing future.

• Ōhinga Tū provides a range of mentoring, training, and pre-employment programmes for young people with each programme designed to meet specific needs.

Māori are over represented in almost every health and social service support statistic, including those provided by Visionwest. Visionwest has taken a proactive approach to integrating tikanga (ways of being) and mātauranga (knowledge) from Te Ao Māori to seek to develop options of support that we hope will serve Māori (and others) better. This includes Huia Mai which is involved in:

• Proactive Kaupapa Māori development within Visionwest.
• Several kaupapa Māori-focused services including Mātanga Oranga (Māori-informed trauma support), Ōhinga Tu (rangatahi development programme), and My Whare (youth housing programme).

15.5% of the population of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland identify with a Pacific ethnicity  With this in mind and recognising the overrepresentation of Paseifika tagata (people) accessing Visionwest services, a GM of Pasefika Development has recently been appointed. It is too early to report on progress in this space in this report.